Labour Voters. Honest question

[Tryingtodobetter82]

I’m not looking to start an argument on this subject. I know it’s a very heated and emotive topic.

I have strong views on political issues. What with algorithms and biased news organisations, it’s very easy to end up only seeing information that confirms what we already believe. Because of that, you don’t often hear the other side of the political divide.

I’m honestly curious whether those who voted Labour at the last General Election, for reference I did not, would vote the same way if there were an early GE in January, purely hypothetical of course.

If so, I’d really appreciate you sharing what you feel they’ve done right so far in their term. I’m asking as I genuinely want to understand different perspectives.

YABU - I would vote labour again
YANBU - I wouldn’t vote for them again (or ever have)

Its impossible to change a whole country in such a short time.

No. You should blame Ed Milliband for Brexit.

In defence of Labour (or for that matter any other party in power) the impossible task is getting policy actually implemented. Any new policy will be watered down and delayed by the Civil Service, there will then need to be exceptions made to placate backbenchers, it will then face legal challenges or conflicts with existing legislation or regulations etc. All to the point where the original policy is watered down to the point where it becomes ineffectual.

Secondly they are in an impossible situation economically , they can't increase debt (as Liz Truss found out the hard way), if they cut spending then their backbenchers will rebel and if they increase taxation then the economy will simply further slow.

As a criticism of Labour, I really don't think that they think through the secondary impacts of their policies, for example the restrictions on WFA meant an increase in those eligible to claim for pension credits meaning that the savings were much less than forecast , the VAT on private school fees meant that wealthy parents pre paid, less wealthy parents switched to the state sector meaning revenue raised is much less than forecast. The removal of the non dom tax benefit meant that wealthy individuals simply left the country meaning net tax revenue went down.

This was done only yesterday. Getting boring now
www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5466477-does-anyone-still-support-this-labour-government?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

No, I don’t think corruption happened. All the contracts were vetted by the civil service.

Some contracts were bad, but that was because the government was trying to keep people alive in the middle of a global pandemic. It was an unprecedented scramble.

GLP lost every single challenge on PPE procurement. The VIP lane was held technically unlawful because of a European procurement regulation. The breach was so minor that the court refused to grant a declaration of unlawfulness.

I think it looks very, very bad for Labour to lie about this and to try to score political points from it. Labour’s website pre-election went on and on about supposed PPE corruption. Crickets now.

The ‘corruption czar’ reported last month. Nothing about corruption at all. Just some bad contracts, such as they were.

HTH.

Yep voted for them last time and would again. Possibly with a bit less enthusiasm but when the alternative is either Farage or Badenoch or some horrible combination of the two then I'd still crawl over a mile of broken glass to do it.

I don't know whether it's social media or what, but I swear most of the UK's adult population are like dozy kids with tiny attention spans these days. The Tories really did leave a terrible legacy to be sorted out, the UK faces pretty serious demographic problems anyway, and there is all sorts of shit going on in the world that is really very unhelpful. Yet because Labour/Starmer haven't delivered a land of milk and honey in 18 months people are once against turning to a charismatic charlatan selling simple solutions, this time in the form of Nigel Farage. If anybody thinks he's got the interests of ordinary working people at heart then they are fucking gullible idiots.

I wouldn’t say corruption on the same level but if you’re after my personal opinion:

Mandelson is vile
Reeves should have gone
Raynor should have stayed

but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

But is it right wing press or are people just pointing out Labour are lieing? Even from your list, most claims are quite easily proven false. Instead of 6500 new teachers there are actually 1350 fewer teachers, instead of more GPs there are fewer GPs per capita, instead of ending train strikes there have been almost double the amount of strike days in 2025 compared with 2024. Smash the gangs ? Theres been a 10% increase in illegal immigration.

That’s before you get to the ideological argument in favour of £95 billion in tax increases, taxing education, authoritarian policies on free speech, identity politics around ‘working people’ etc. covered up with creative black holes, accounting, accusations of being far right and dodgy statistics.

I think this has got to be the most unpopular Government I’ve ever lived through, I saw a prediction of them only having 5 seats after the next election which I can well believe. They are deliberately malicious driven by really sinister motives that very few people agree with.

So, what has starmer achieved up to now.
In no particular order:
Given billions away to the Chagos Islands
Given our fishing rights away
Fucked over the private school system.
Fucked over private business enterprise
Reneged on his "no tax rise" policies
Fucked over the pensioners and disabled then U turned.
Made working for a living pretty much pointless by giving huge UC rises
Fucked over the farmers.
Gave train drivers a big rise with no conditions attached
Conspired with Merseyside police to cover up the Southport stabbing perpetrators identity.
Jailed those who made their feelings clear over the whole fiasco.
Hasn't smashed the gangs.In fact more and more arriving almost every day.
And finally.... the cherry on the cake (drum roll) made it his top priority as UK premier to allow in aan anti semitic jihad supporter who openly Hates Britain, white people and Jews, and declared how delighted he was to accommodate him Ta-daaaaa!!!!

Neither Kemi Badenoch nor Farage are remotely fit to lead the country (I actually quite like Badenoch and think she seems like she'd be quite a laugh behind closed doors, but she just comes across as far too unserious as a politician).

Farage is utterly utterly appalling and I really think people who think this country has already gone to the dogs will be in for the shock of their lives if Reform ever form a government. I have many friends and colleagues who are non white and/or were not born in this country and yet have gone on to contribute enormously - I don't doubt for a second that a Reform win would hugely alienate many of them, and would almost certainly legitimise an uptick in racial hatred and racially aggravated incidents.

Anyway, Labour is far from perfect but both other options are so completely intolerable that I wouldn't hesitate to vote for them next time round.

Parties of any colour don't have to try too hard to bring Farage down. He does that himself with the company he keeps.

Yep.

In answer to your question OP which has been asked many times before btw I did vote Labour last year. I don’t know who I will vote for next time but I know it won’t be Tories (I’m working class so that’s shooting myself in the foot) or Reform (at best stupid, At worse stupid and dangerous). Will have to carefully consider all other options- Green, Lib Dem, Plaid Cymru as well as Labour.

Labour have demonstrated they are not remotely fit to lead the country, there is absolutely no doubt in this. They are out of the running, I suspect for decades. I like Reforms policies in reversing almost all of Labours nonsense and I really don’t think insinuations of racism or unseriousness will save Labour.

How is this any better or worse than cosying up to jihadis and letting them into the country?

I would vote Labour again, but only because there is no one else to vote for! There are no other left-wing parties that have a chance of keeping the Tories out.

As a previous poster said, Labour never think things through because they are economically illiterate - doling out money willy nilly to appease the left wing back benchers and TUs and their party faithful and screwing the same ever diminishing band of workers and employers to pay for it it without seeing the bigger picture and resulting impact on employment and, ultimately, the tax take they need to pay for their ideologies. They will never tackle the bloated public sector or sort out immigration. The political shift to the right is the lefts own creation. You can't fritter tax payers money and lecture people on what they can say, do or even think without an eventual revolt.

This 100%

Out of interest, when you say ‘working people’ is that using Labours definition of anyone earning less than £38k, not actually working or tube drivers?

Why?

Realistically what are the better alternatives, the Tories with their appalling track record over previous governments and current shambles of leadership, or the batshit incompetent, grifter led Reform??

I'm guessing neither of you would be inclined to vote Labour anyway.

Yes quite clearly and by any measure (unless you’re state funded), both Tories and Reform are better alternatives than Labour.

Who are you speaking about specifically?

Why?

Truss?